# Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 2) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 25, 2024, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785 "2024-07-25T15:06:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 281
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2026, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5602 "2026-10-22T21:29:40Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I’m one of those luddites who watches sports, not the shows about sports or the twitter feeds about sports or the [whatevers] about sports. LOL, I’m the exact opposite. I’ll listen to sports podcasts, read sports articles, argue about NBA shit… and never watch a single game all year. ---
**Author:** ![teelabrown](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teelabrown/32/8412_2.png) [@teelabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teelabrown)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2026, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5603 "2026-10-22T21:35:55Z")
A nearby stretch of road was nicely repaved, restriped, and new dots glued on. The blue dots were very obvious, being new and bright and shiny, and I realized I didn’t know their purpose. I remembered to Google them up this morning: they are there to denote fire hydrants right opposite them at the curb. The blueness makes it easier for firefighters to quickly find a hydrant even if it’s foggy, smoky, trafficky, or chaotic. So now I know. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2026, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5604 "2026-10-22T22:10:21Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > The Planck Length, which is the smallest measurable unit of length in physics, We don’t actually know that. If spacetime is quantized, and if it’s quantized in such a way that there is such a thing as a smallest measurable unit of length, then our best guess is that that smallest length is somewhere in the general vicinity of the Planck length. But that’s a lot of qualifiers, and we’re pretty much in the dark on all of them. We won’t know the answers of any of those questions at least until we develop a quantum theory of gravity, which we aren’t really even close to. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2026, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5605 "2026-10-22T23:10:56Z")
Note that, for example, the Planck mass is nowhere near the smallest possible mass. It’s at least 1029 times larger than the neutrino mass. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2026, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5606 "2026-10-22T23:21:32Z")
Yeah, some of the Planck units are incredibly large, and we know (at least, so far as we know anything in physics) that the Planck speed is the largest possible speed. And some of them are incredibly small, and we know (same caveats) that the Planck angular momentum is the smallest possible angular momentum. But the Planck mass is about the mass of a bacterium: Incredibly large for a subatomic particle, but incredibly small for a black hole. And the Planck momentum is about the momentum of a running housecat. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2026, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5607 "2026-10-22T23:47:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > the Planck mass is about the mass of a bacterium: Incredibly large for a subatomic particle, but incredibly small for a black hole. And wouldn’t we love to see a black hole small enough that it had measurable Hawking radiation, so we could test what happens when General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics bump heads. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2026, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5608 "2026-10-23T01:09:06Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > > > meaningless mathematical masturbation. > > Superb bit of alliteration. meaningless mathematical masturbation = m³ ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2026, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5609 "2026-10-23T01:54:08Z")
Oh, yeah, back when the LHC was firing up and some folks were worried about it producing black holes, I said that it was the second-most-interesting thing it could possibly do (and still wasn’t any actual risk). The most interesting, of course, was something we hadn’t expected at all. Sadly, all it found was the Higgs and nothing else, which was the least interesting possible outcome. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2026, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5610 "2026-10-23T02:09:32Z")
Great post. Was that really the only new science? Is it still going? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2026, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5611 "2026-10-23T02:33:08Z")
I mean, it’s refined a lot of things, brought down the error bars on a lot of numbers, that sort of thing. That’s an underappreciated part of science, and it’s earned its keep fairly. But nothing revolutionary. ---
**Author:** ![CobaltBlade75](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de053/32.png) [@CobaltBlade75](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CobaltBlade75)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2026, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5612 "2026-10-23T02:34:19Z")
Here’s one that still delights me: wombats produce cube-shaped droppings because the elasticity of their intestines varies along the length, and the shape conveniently keeps the scat from rolling away when they mark territory. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2026, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5613 "2026-10-23T12:32:47Z")
Granted, many things in theoretical physics cannot be tested or measured in a laboratory. Heck, the term “length” itself applied to something that small is questionable. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5614 "2026-10-24T17:00:46Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > Granted, many things in theoretical physics cannot be tested or measured in a laboratory. Usually, that’s a moving target: There are things that can’t be tested in the lab right now, but as technology improves, or someone comes up with a clever new experiment, they can be. And there is, in that sense, a smallest distance that can be measured by physics (using current technology). But that current, technological, limit is far, far away from the Planck length. On the other hand, there are also some things in physics that (so far as we know) simply can’t be measured at all, no matter how far technology advances. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5615 "2026-10-24T17:19:20Z")
If you’re referring to the example of a particle’s motion and position simultaneously, it isn’t that we can’t measure it but that there aren’t two separate values to measure: a quantum particle doesn’t have an absolute motion AND an absolute position. So it’s not merely a case of nature holding out on us, it’s that there’s no “there” there. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5616 "2026-10-24T18:41:37Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > the term “length” itself applied to something that small is questionable. Now you mention it, I see that the English language is in dire need of the word “shorth” for such minute …huh… shorths. I hereby declare this word coined. > [@Chronos](#): > > there are also some things in physics that (so far as we know) simply can’t be measured at all Now I am curious. Could you give some examples that are understandable to laypeople? > [@Lumpy](#): > > the example of a particle’s motion and position simultaneously I don’t think that is what **Chronos** was refering to: a limit on the precision of two simultaneous measurements of correlated phenomena is not the same as “can’t be measured at all”. I may be wrong, and of course I am not writing in his name. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5617 "2026-10-24T19:10:53Z")
The uncertainty principle would be one example of what I’m referring to, though it’s a philosophical question whether the precise position and velocity are even something that actually exists at all. Another example would be the absolute phase of any quantum mechanical wavefunction: Relative phases certainly exist, and are responsible for a great many quantum effects, but absolute phase is completely inaccessible. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5618 "2026-10-24T21:02:36Z")
Four of the five original members of the Zombies are still alive. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5619 "2026-10-24T21:21:17Z")
Alive or undead? ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5620 "2026-10-24T22:26:35Z")
As of November 18, the Voyageur 1 spacecraft (launched 49 years ago) will be one light-day from Earth. Only about 1500 more “days” to reach the nearest star. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2026, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/5621 "2026-10-24T22:36:24Z")
That’s astonishing and humiliating at once. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=280) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=282)